Carla and Ted Krull of Orange County listen as research grants are being approved in Burlingame. Their daughter suffers from Huntington's disease.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Carla and Ted Krull of Orange County listen as research grants are...

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The Rizzuto family celebrates after a state funding agency approved a grant to study Huntington's disease.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

The Rizzuto family celebrates after a state funding agency approved...

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Betty Gemaehlich of Pittsburg, who suffers from pulmonary problems, waits as the agency makes grant decisions on stem cell research projects.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Betty Gemaehlich of Pittsburg, who suffers from pulmonary problems,...

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CureDuchenne founder Debora Miller (at microphone) and members of Huntington's disease Society of America line up to talk at a meeting in Burlingame, Calif., on Thursday, July 26, 2012., where the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine is deciding on where to approve more than $100 million in research grants.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

CureDuchenne founder Debora Miller (at microphone) and members of...

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Board members of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine Duane Roth (left) and Jon Thomas (right) listening to the public as CIRM is deciding where to approve more than $100 million in research grants in Burlingame, Calif., on Thursday, July 26, 2012.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Board members of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine...

California's stem cell funding agency on Thursday approved nearly $100 million in grants for research into heart disease, cancer and spinal cord injuries, and to the cheers of dozens of patients and their supporters, it also awarded money to rare but devastating diseases with no cure.

The daylong meeting was packed with comments from patients, doctors and their advocates, including impassioned, often tear-inducing pleas for funding from many people with Huntington's disease and Lou Gehrig's disease - two conditions known to cause nerve cells to waste away, eventually leading to death.

In the case of Lou Gehrig's disease (also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS), the patient pleas may well have had an impact: The institute's review board approved an $18 million grant, even though the grant proposal had just missed the cut for automatic approval. The $19 million grant for Huntington's disease had the highest score of all 21 proposals up for funding, and it was approved easily.

"The thought of no hope, I think that's the worst part," said Katie Jackson, whose husband, Michael Hinshaw, has Huntington's disease. Both Jackson and her husband spoke before the institute's governing board, which approves all grants.

"When Mike was diagnosed, I couldn't believe there was nothing they could do for him," she said. "We need hope more than we can explain to you."

Clinical trials next

The Huntington's disease grant was one of three awarded to UC Davis stem cell scientists - the most given to a single institution this year.

In the Bay Area, Stanford doctors won a $20 million grant for heart failure research and another $20 million to study a treatment for severe combined immune deficiency, a condition in which children are born without a functional immune system. Scientists at StemCells Inc. in Newark were awarded $20 million for a spinal cord study.

All of the grants go toward research that is expected to lead to human clinical trials within the next four years. Those trials would be small and designed to test the safety of the stem cell treatments and not necessarily whether the treatments work.

Still, in many cases patients and scientists alike are thrilled with the prospect of clinical trials in the near future for conditions that currently have very limited treatment options and are fatal, or else have debilitating outcomes.

"It's revolutionary that an agency like (CIRM) is able to provide the kind of funding to enable a clinical trial for Huntington's disease and other orphan diseases," said Jan Nolta, stem cell program director at UC Davis, who attended Thursday's meeting. "It's giving people so much hope."

Both the UC Davis Huntington's disease team and the scientists at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles studying Lou Gehrig's disease are hoping to use adult stem cells to slow down or stop the destruction of nerve cells caused by the conditions.

Blood flow and bone

One of the two other UC Davis projects to win funding involves studying techniques to stimulate blood vessel growth in patients with a disease that causes diminished blood flow to hands, feet and legs, leading to severe pain and sometimes amputation. The other project is looking at directing the patient's own stem cells to form new bone, which would be used to treat osteoporosis.

The StemCells Inc. grant will go toward transplanting neural stem cells into patients with neck, or cervical spinal cord injuries. StemCells Inc. already has studied similar procedures in patients with thoracic spinal cord injuries, but injuries to the neck are more common.

UCLA also won a grant, for research into using stem cells to target treatments for melanoma.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine was created in 2004, when state voters approved legislation to provide funding for stem cell research. The legislation was in response to Bush administration restrictions on funding studies involving human embryonic stem cells.

Stanford's heart disease grant will go to a project that involves implanting embryonic stem cells that are programmed to become heart cells into sections of the heart that have died. The study is looking only at patients who are in end-stage heart failure, meaning they need a heart transplant to survive. Because hearts for transplantation are so hard to come by, doctors have long sought a treatment that can repair dead heart tissue.

"We know we can get beating cardiac cells from embryonic stem cells. The trick is going to be getting those to incorporate into the myocardium, to survive, and then to coordinate with the normal muscle of the heart," Robbins said. "That is not a trivial thing."